Red Sox Ripoff

By Jeff Christenbury in Opinion, Red Sox ⋅ April 5, 2008 at 10:30pm ⋅ Post a comment

Say what you will about the New York Yankees and their spending ways. In the last decade, the Yanks have spent more than one BILLION dollars on player salaries and didn’t win a World Series. The Red Sox have won two WS titles in four years and tickets to Fenway Park are the hardest ticket to get in Major League Baseball.

Since 2003 the Red Sox have raised ticket prices in an attempt to “keep up spending with the Yankees.” Makes sense right? Most fans quietly complain about the difficulty to get tickets and that bleacher seats are now $26, not including any convenience fee of course, which can be as much as $7 a ticket. For the past few seasons, fans who wish to attend Sox games must enter a lottery just for the right to buy tickets for certain games.

Most Red Sox fans accept the new restrictions on getting their in-person baseball experience because they feel ‘hey, if they win, what do I care.’ Not too much to argue with there, but now a true Red Sox fan has to start looking at their own franchise and realize just how much money the owners are profiting (and this isn’t even taking into account Japanese sales from Dice-K or Okajima).

The Boston Herald has a story tonight that the Red Sox are now going to be auctioning off Monster Seats to the highest bidders, in the process making thousands upon thousands of dollars over face value.

The Herald reports that on Friday, the Red Sox took in $30,000 for just 100 Green Monster seats for games against the Tigers and Yankees next week. The Sox plan to auction off 5,000 ‘premium’ seats during the season, and if they make three times the face value amount (as they did for those 100 or so Monster seats), you can do the math.

To cap things off, the Sox have responded by arguing that they are “doing it for the common fan” by allowing the higher bidders to take up those seats. Doesn’t make much sense to me either.

What say you Red Sox nation? Should the Red Sox auction be allowed to basically scalp off 5,000 tickets this year, with a near guarantee that number will increase next year? Are the Sox really in that much need of more funds? What say you?

Tags: Fenway Park

Discussion

7 comments for “Red Sox Ripoff”

Should the Red Sox be allowed? Of course. It’s their park and their seats. They can charge and sell them according to what ever plan they wish. You, as a fan, have no right to that ticket.

If someone doesn’t like the arrangement, don’t buy a ticket.

I think the auction is a great idea! It gives fans access to games that in the past they would have had to hunt down a season ticket holder for or buy from a scalper. Speaking from experience, that can be very difficult. This way they actually have a realistic shot at those tickets–if they are willing to pay the fee. As it should be.

As long as the team continues to put the majority of the money back into the team and thus continues to be a top MLB team, then I don’t have a single complaint.

Posted by Shawn | April 6, 2008, 10:20 am
I know they have a high payroll, but its now 4th in Major League Baseball and WAY behind the Yankees 200+ million dollar payroll. With a small ballpark of under 40,000, that’s huge considering they could probably fill 50,000 every night.

It doesn’t seem right but its just the same as what would happen anyway: scalpers or StubHub would get the seats at face value and sell them at a huge profit: wouldn’t you rather the team get those profits to spend on the players than some fat angelino who’s gonna screw more people?

Posted by KC | April 6, 2008, 12:45 pm
I guess my problem with it is the location of the tickets. If they wanted to auction off luxury box suites or front row seats I wouldn’t mind because the “average fan” can’t afford those seats anyway.

But I thought the Monster Seats were an opportunity to give the average fan one of the most unique views in all of Major League Baseball. It seemed like an addition for the fans, and now they are effectively pricing out people who can’t afford $3,000 a ticket. The question is, where do they go next?

Posted by Jeff | April 6, 2008, 1:47 pm
That’s interesting that the Red Sox are actually doing this. I read an article last year that the NFL was going to officially and exclusively associate itself with an online ticket reseller like Stub Hub. Not sure if they have done it yet but the crux of the article was that in the future all NFL teams would use the auction process to sell their seats effectively eliminating face value tickets.
It sucks for the fans but it makes a lot of sense for the owners.

Posted by TC | April 6, 2008, 2:56 pm
[...] Boston Herald had a story over the weekend that the Red Sox are now going to be auctioning off Monster Seats to the highest bidders, in the process making thousands upon thousands of dollars over face [...]

Posted by Green Monsters? | Sports of Boston | April 6, 2008, 4:02 pm
Only way to stop this is to NOT buy these tickets. Since this won’t happen, I’m sure a lot of other teams are going to do the same thing down the road.

Posted by Dave | April 7, 2008, 9:16 am
I think it’s ok. To Jeff, they sold for about $300 a ticket, not $3000….big difference.

The fact is that most “average fans” who ended up with Monster seats sold them to ticket brokers, scalped them themselves, or at the least ‘traded up’ with them. As in, ‘I’ll trade my Monster seats to a Kansas City game for good seats to a Yankees game.’ What does that all mean? It means the Monster tickets are worth a lot more in the open market.

To be frank, if a bunch of tourists, rich people, and pink hats want to sit 40 feet above left field, good for them! If they get those seats, maybe there will be more of the truly good seats left for schlubs like me. I’m sure it’s neat to sit on the Monster, but it certainly is not the best view of the game. I’d rather sit elsewhere. And I’d rather the Sox get the money than the scalpers.

Posted by Rachel C | April 7, 2008, 12:10 pm